Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2006-153773 discloses a range image sensor which comprises a plurality of photosensitive units for generating electrical charge in accordance with the amount of light received, and an image generator for computing the distance to the object using the set of charges generated by the photosensitive units and generating a range image whose computed distance is the pixel value.
The range image sensor disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2006-153773 is a TOF (Time of Flight) sensor and thus requires special, expensive CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) sensors or MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) scanners. Consequently, the range image sensor disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2006-153773 is expensive.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-explained circumstance, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an inexpensive range image sensor, range image generating apparatus, range image data obtaining method and range image generating method.